taken 5 years ago, near to Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire, Great Britain

Charlecote Mill - poetry in motion

This is the machinery being driven by the western 18' diameter undershot waterwheel. The pit wheel is bottom left and drives to the wooden great spur wheel. This in turn drives the stone that turns the runner stone on the floor above. The tentering [1] arrangement is seen below the stone nut. Visitors are encouraged to take a good look in this room.

In a mill context, tentering is changing the distance (gap) between the runner stone and the bed stone. Decreasing the distance results in a finer grain. As the stones go faster there is a natural tendency for the runner to rise and the tentering mechanism can be adjusted to counter this. In many windmills this is done by a governor that automatically compensates for the tendency of the runner to rise. In watermills it is done by hand with mechanisms of varying elegance. In this case, the second order lever at the bottom raises or lowers the footstep bearing that the spindle carrying the stone nut is supported by. The adjustment is by a vertical lead screw on the other side of the frame and in easy reach of the miller.

A fine example of a working watermill, still producing flour. It presents an excellent example of a fairly large lowland mill, and as such had its listing as a historic building upgraded to Listed Grade II* in 2002.
The present mill was built in around 1806 and is unusual in having two separate wheels. This however does mean that there is a large uninterrupted working space through the middle of the mill. The wheels are of the undershot type, with a diameter of 18 feet, but the relatively small fall is compensated for by the volume of water provided by the river. When the level of the river gets too high, there is insufficient fall and the mill cannot work.